All of the words of the Saviour are important, even the words spoken that were strictly rhetorical. One such utterance is found in the story of the sinful woman, told in Luke 7:36f. The story is told of a day that Christ entered the house of a Pharisee in response […]
Sunday reading
Boundaries, Borders, And The True God
Years ago, as a young seminarian, I wanted to paint icons. I knew nothing about icons, only that I liked them and that they were holy. The vast wealth of books and materials on their meaning and even on the technique of painting them simply did not exist. My knowledge […]
Dust of the Earth
“You are dust, and to dust you shall return…” (Gen. 3:18) Human beings have a fundamental bond with the planet on which we live – we are made of its stuff. We are not made of Mars dirt, or Moon dust, Jupiter gas, or Saturn rings. We are made of […]
Is Turban Russia’s Invention? Ukrainians Suspect Russians Were Originally Non-Slavic
Among the many pseudohistorical fabrications promoted by ardent Ukrainian nationalists, there is the concept of the so-called “Russian turban”. This idea is used to imply that Russians were originally Muslims, not Christians, and thus to frame them as a foreign, non-Slavic and non-European population. Usually this fabrication is accompanied by […]
A Judicial Blindness
Ah, England. I love it: the home of Shakespeare, the Crown Jewels, London Bridge, Big Ben…and constant ecclesiastical weirdness. It seems just yesterday that we were treated to the spectacle of two lesbian priestesses exulting over the Church of England’s decision to bless the union of gay and lesbian couples. Now, hard […]
Closing The Doors
In every Orthodox Liturgy there comes a moment when the deacon cries out, “The doors! The doors!” This is not (as one parishioner once informed me) the directive to open the Royal Doors of the iconostas, but to make sure that the main doors into the church (the original “royal doors”) […]
The Madness of Democracy – A Spiritual Disease – Glory To God For All Things
Dostoevsky’s The Demons tells the story of a revolution within the context of a small village and a handful of personalities. The strange mix of philosophy and neurosis, crowd psychology and fashionable disdain for tradition all come together in the madness of a bloodbath. It is a 19th century Helter Skelter that presciently predicted […]
What We Really Want
One of the great misunderstandings of our modern world centers around the place of the “will” in our lives. Modern democracies are built around slogans of freedom and fancy themselves to be the vanguard of advancing that cause. It has been a powerful force. Coupled with various aspects of free-market […]
A Single Moment
Grushenka, a character in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, relates a now-famous fable about an old woman: Once upon a time there was a woman, and she was wicked as wicked could be, and she died. And not one good deed was left behind her. The devils took her and threw […]
What’s With The Kingdom Of God?
Thy Kingdom Come Blessed are You on the throne of the glory of Your Kingdom, seated upon the Cherubim; always, now and ever and unto ages of ages. It was You Who brought us from non-existence into being, and when we had fallen away You raised us up again, and […]
Before The Judgment Seat Of Christ
For a Christian ending to our life: painless, unashamed, and peaceful; and a good defense before the dread judgment seat of Christ, let us ask of the Lord. From my childhood, I have memories of the phrase, “Great White Throne of Judgment.” It comes complete with an abundance of frightening […]
Knowing The Knowledge That Transforms
“If only I had known…” These are, not infrequently, the words of an apology. They are also an explanation of why we are sometimes the way we are. Ignorance is, in the mind of the Fathers, a major cause of sin. Of course, if sin is understood in a legal/forensic […]
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